Should the attention of an individual in the herd be attracted by any unusual appearance in the forest, the intelligence is rapidly communicated by a low suppressed sound made by the lips, somewhat resembling the twittering of a bird, and described by the hunters by the word “prut.”

A very remarkable noise has been described to me by more than one individual, who has come unexpectedly upon a herd during the night, when the alarm of the elephants was apparently too great to be satisfied with the stealthy note of warning just described.  On these occasions the sound produced resembled the hollow booming of an empty tun when struck with a wooden mallet or a muffled sledge.  Major MACREADY, Military Secretary in Ceylon in 1836, who heard it by night amongst the wild elephants in the great forest of Bintenne, describes it as “a sort of banging noise like a cooper hammering a cask;” and Major SKINNER is of opinion that it must be produced by the elephant striking his sides rapidly and forcibly with his trunk.  Mr. CRIPPS informs me that he has more than once seen an elephant, when surprised or alarmed, produce this sound by striking the ground forcibly with the flat side of the trunk; and this movement was instantly succeeded by raising it again, and pointing it in the direction whence the alarm proceeded, as if to ascertain by the sense of smell the nature of the threatened danger.  As this strange sound is generally mingled with the bellowing and ordinary trumpeting of the herd, it is in all probability a device resorted to, not alone for warning their companions of some approaching peril, but also for the additional purpose of terrifying unseen intruders.[1]

[Footnote 1:  PALLEGOIX, in his Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, adverts to a sound produced by the elephant when weary:  “quand il est fatigue, il frappe la terre avec sa trompe, et en tire un son semblable a celui du cor.”—­Tom. i. p. 151.]

Elephants are subject to deafness; and the Singhalese regard as the most formidable of all wild animals, a “rogue"[1] afflicted with this infirmity.

[Footnote 1:  For an explanation of the term “rogue” as applied to an elephant, see p. 115.]

Extravagant estimates are recorded of the height of the elephant.  In an age when popular fallacies in relation to him were as yet uncorrected in Europe by the actual inspection of the living animal, he was supposed to grow to the height of twelve or fifteen feet.  Even within the last century in popular works on natural history, the elephant, when full grown, was said to measure from seventeen to twenty feet from the ground to the shoulder.[1] At a still later period, so imperfectly had the facts been collated, that the elephant of Ceylon was believed “to excel that of Africa in size and strength."[2] But so far from equalling the size of the African species, that of Ceylon seldom exceeds the height of nine feet; even in the Hambangtotte country, where the hunters